• Decorate your dining table with a bunny cake band by Lucie Heaton
• Find out how to make fun Easter basket 'pokes' on plastic canvas
• Remember the reason for the season with a special Christian ABC by Maria Diaz
• We've even got two bonus charts as a treat for our blog visitors that you can download right here.

 
PLUS!

• Don't miss your FREE gift this month – 30 luxury pins!
• Bridesmaid and page boy gifts
• Oriental flowers to decorate your home
• Birthday cards in the style of vintage advertisements
• A glow-in-the-dark skeleton for the kids to try
• Robbie Williams Stitch a Star

Issue 224 goes on sale today in all good newsagents and supermarkets until Wednesday 24th March. Pick up yours now, or order a subscription and be one of the first to get a copy of CrossStitcher through your door every month!

Issue 218, our amazing Gold Issue, is out on the shelves right now! We've got a fantastic Golden Ticket competition this month, so make sure you check inside your copy to see if you're one of the lucky 25 winners...

We also have a gorgeous retro Santa design by Angela Poole, a sweet Pooh and Piglet from Disney, tree decorations for the kids to make, plus an adorable meerkats scene - don't miss it!

Note: Some subscribers have been in touch to tell us they haven't received their copies yet. This is down to the postal strikes in some areas of the country, but our subscriptions team are aware of the problem and your issue should be with you soon. If you have a specific query drop them a line at future@subscription.co.uk.

If you're looking to personalise the fab needlecase designed by Moira Blackburn in CrossStitcher issue 215, click here to download your free alphabet chart.

A heart vs head dilemma for Mr X Stitch.

We had a very positive response to the first blog from 'manbroiderer' Jamie Chalmers, aka Mr X Stitch, back in April. He's an advocate of all things cool and modern in the cross stitch universe - check out his latest finds on his website.

We're pleased that he's come back to share some more of his cross stitching adventures. Don't forget to email us and tell us what you think - Jamie and the team would love to hear from you.

And don't miss issue 213, out on  Thursday 18th June,  in which Jamie is one of the stars of our urban cross stitch feature. Let us know what you think of alternative cross stitch, too!

“It wasn’t long into my stitching adventures that I realised I needed to get a grip.
I’d completed three or four small kits, and one larger piece, and had several bags of threads lying around tormenting me. They had the potential to be used for something else, but without being arranged in some kind of order, I felt stifled about what to do with them.

Something had to be done!

So I bought my first bobbin box, and distinctly remember spending one Saturday night in front of the telly, winding bobbins up and arranging them in numeric order. And boy, did I feel good by the time I finished! My little friends stared up at me from their spaces and invited me to engage with them in the joy of stitching. Which I duly did.

Time passed and the number of stitcheries increased. And so did the number of thread colours. So I got a second box. And then a third. And now I operate a four box strategy..! That’s a lot of threads…

Herein lies my dilemma – do I stick to keeping my bobbins in number order, or do I throw caution to the wind and arrange them by colour and shade?

The obsessive-compulsive part of me puts up a strong argument, stating that the thread companies wouldn’t provide number codes for the threads if they weren’t meant to be organised thusly, and it is this argument I have followed so far.

But the creative side of me sees pictures of people’s bobbin boxes, where the bobbins are arranged by colour, and thinks it would be wonderful to be able to run my finger over all the different colours and pick whichever shade takes my fancy.
But then (says my head) if you’re following a pattern, you need to find the right threads according to number… But then that (says my heart) limits your capacity to make creative changes to the pattern, changes that would come from choosing a slightly different shade to the prescribed pattern…

And on and on… The dilemma of head versus heart continues to this day.

Part of me wants to spend a day organising the bobbins by colour, so that I can then re-organise them by number at a later date. But that part of me doesn’t get out much.

And don’t even ask me about people who use the “putting the thread in a plastic wallet with a hole in the corner” system – I’ll keep you here all day!

Faithful readers, help me move forward with my quandary. Tell me your top tips and what works for you. And I’ll share the best ideas with you the next time we meet."

Do you Twitter? Do you like to tweet about your stitching? Now you can follow CrossStitcher on Twitter and find out what we're up to on a day-to-day basis. Because someone else already had our name (!) we are known around those parts as XStitchmagazine.

The waiting is almost over and the CrossStitcher team are busy packing their bags for the Stich & Craft Show 2009, which opens at Olympia II tomorrow.

We've been busy cramming as many projects as possible into our luggage to take to the show, and have sent them Londonwards with marketing gurus Charlotte and Becky. Even Bob from sister title Cross Stitch Collection failed to escape without a bag of CrossStitcher goodies under his arm, all ready for your perusal when the doors open tomorrow.

One of the highlights for cross stitchers is the Madeira stiching zone, where you can try out some of Madeira's new products with the help of the CrossStitcher experts. The kind people at Willow Fabrics have generously supplied the aida for you to stitch on - be sure to check out the thousands of fabrics and threads available at their website.

Cathy and Rebecca will be at the show tomorrow, while Harriet, Nicola, Helena and myself will be there on Saturday (along with Margaret Sherry). We look forward to meeting you.

Get directions to Olympia and more information here.

It's Red Nose Day tomorrow, and we want to know what you're doing to raise cash for Comic Relief. The theme this year is 'do something funny for money' and our sister magazine, The Knitter, has joined forces with Rowan to create a cute Red Nose corsage.

Have you stitched a project from issue 208, or will you be spending some quality 'me' time over Christmas stitching one of the projects? If so, we'd love to hear from you!

Send us a photo of your finished project and you could win a beautiful Damask Rose set from Textile Heritage. It's a gorgeous design and contains all you need to stitch a bookmark, needlecase and scissor keep.

Experienced knitters should hotfoot it over to the brand new website for The Knitter, the new magazine for experienced knitters that hits the shelves on 7th January.